FUTURE PRIMITIVE ART
Out of a 5x5x5 performance art piece comes a high context hybrid art project that peers into the near future now.
I was filled with a burst of new energy to just create after coming home from Burnging Man's Waking Dreams. In a knee jerk reaction I called up Steve Aquilar, who facilitates Ventura's monthly 5x5x5. I asked him if he had a slot available for me. He did. I took the slot not knowing what I was going to do. When I hung up the phone I was like...oh crap...now I gotta do it!
The 5x5x5 is a performance art venue. It's a wide open canvas for mulit-media performances that run the gambit of contemporary art. So my mind was reeling with all these concepts. The first one was creating these dancing waterdrop like jewel costumes and choreographing a piece to a song I'd heard on ccMixter. But that required a lot of teamwork and production. I didn't have the bandwidth for that.
Then I got scared...time was ticking and I had to do something. In the back of my mind I comforted myself with the security of playing a song on the guitar. It would be what most people expected. Safe.
I didn't want to that though.
Then, three days before the show. I had an idea. I'd been messing around with these Occulus Quest VR goggles I had and thought, what if I center the performance around the human perceptions of reality? Halloween was just around the corner so costumes and playing with personas was palpable in the air.
"We are blinded by a fake (alternate,virtual) reality in which we frame information to serve our own needs. We think we understand the world around us but instead it results in a dim reflection in how we perceive "ourselves"- Sjef van Leeuwen
From there a few other puzzle pieces came fit together and the vision started to take form.
But it still wasn't totally there. The nut, the core of the piece was unfocused until the night before. I was in the Art City jGallery amming with the crew when the lightbulb went on. I thought "I'll paint a self portrait of the character I'm creating on the gallery wall."
Perfect in so many ways. I get to break rules right in front of everyone. From there it all clicked and Future Primitive was consummated.
Future Primitive is high context art. Future Primitive is art in process. Future Primitive art breaks rules. Become Future Primitive.
Watch the seminal performance here:
